Olive

by Emma Gannon

The idea

of becoming a mother was something passed down to me—from my mother, and her mother’s mother, over centuries and centuries of social conditioning. It seemed like a no-brainer. Like all the other milestones in the how-to-be-a-person manual.

Wow. Yes.

guess this is being human: we can never be 100 percent sure about any decision we make.

“I always compare the cost of a year’s worth of diapers to how much traveling I could do instead.”

But we all know the fear that once your friends start to grow their families, you might become less needed and, then, fully redundant.

In Bea’s book, you embrace the madness of life and stop trying to control everything by keeping your life clean and orderly. You let the dog sit on the new sofa. You drink the expensive wine. You use your best moisturizer instead of just leaving it to gather dust in a drawer.

Love Bea

After I got back from Bea’s I just lay horizontal on my sofa for hours watching Queer Eye, while Bea was running around a football field with her kids and Cec was babyproofing her house.

“Is it just me that finds weekends actually quite annoying and draining?” “What do you mean?” “I dunno, just the pressure of it. Having to face up to real life without the distraction of work,”

how in love she is with her new baby, gives me knots in my stomach.

That’s the strange thing about grief—you often have to remind yourself it happened.

but your life isn’t worthless or any less valid if you don’t want a family!”

no choice is the wrong choice because it’s the one you make at the time with the information you have.

I feel like it’s a taboo thing to say that I never really find the weekend that exciting.

“I have a difficult enough time getting motivated to take good care of myself. I cannot imagine having to always put a child first.”

“I’d rather freeze time than my eggs.”

Bea: We were just worried about you Me: That’s a first

“The time will come / when, with elation / you will greet yourself arriving / at your own door, in your own mirror / and each will smile at the other’s welcome.”

Women are made to feel guilty for everything. The food we eat, the bodies we have, the relationships that don’t work out. We must accept the challenge and refuse to take on this guilt.”

“It makes me a little sad sometimes to think that I won’t have anyone to take to Disney for the first time, or read Harry Potter to for the first time. But that’s a flash of sentiment that in no way endures, or has any impact on my decision to not have kids.”

Leaving something behind isn’t just about having a child who will roam the earth after you’ve gone. A legacy is made up of everything you’ve ever done. It’s everything you leave behind. It’s every choice you make. It’s every person you meet. It’s every feeling you’ve passed on. It’s every story you tell.